Aug. 28, 2010 at 11:57pm with 2 notes
Monetizing the brick and mortar store or How the Old Navy App should work. So here’s the idea. You’re at Old Navy and you find a shirt you like, but OH NOES they’re out of your size. You know there’s like ten Old Navys within a reasonable bus ride, but it’s a $15 shirt at Old Navy … is it worth the trip to try and find out? Sometimes one of their helper robots will offer to call another store, but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Maybe it’s there, maybe they can find it, maybe it will still be there when you show up. More than likely, you sigh and put that medium back on the rack and go look at something else. But this time, let’s imagine you do something different. You pull out your smartphone/cameraphone/whatever, and you fire up your gap.com app. You pay $20/year to subscribe to it, but you shop at gap/old navy/banana republic pretty much all the time, and you put it on your gap card anyway, so it’s not a big deal. You grab the tag, which has a QR code like the one above, maybe that says “OLD NAVY” in the middle. You snap a picture of it and the app pops up STUPID HIPSTER SHIRT WITH SNAPS IN HIDEOUS RED PLAID, SKINNY FIT, SIZE MEDIUM, $14.95. You click the button to edit details, grab the drop-down menu and change it to XL b/c you’ve been eating too much mall chinese food lately. Now you click the SEARCH button, and a list pops up showing all the stores in your area and how much stock they think they have (if you’ve been to IKEA or threadless.com you know what I’m talking about). You pick the store that’s on your way to work and you press the HOLD AT STORE button. The app hums for a minute, plays one of those stupid super-model-quins commercials, and you slip your phone back in your pocket and go get a jamba juice. A little while later (maybe ten minutes, maybe half an hour, depends on a lot of factors we won’t get into today) you get a text message from OLD NAVY; “GOOD NEWS we found the item you wanted and it will be held at (the store you selected) for 72 hours; please present hold code 1z7wi4x at the customer service counter”. The next day you swing by on your lunch break and when you show up at your favorite dive bar that evening everyone compliments you on your awesome new western shirt, did you get it at Hollywood Vintage? Now, replace OLD NAVY with APPLE STORE and replace XL WESTERN SHIRT with IPOD TOUCH 16BG 2ND GENERATION and perhaps you see the potential here. Or, since both of these companies have fairly robust online ordering systems and could easily tie that into the app, imagine scanning the QR code for your favorite salad at your local deli, that they only make about once a month, and getting a text message whenever a new batch is in the cold case. Or your local second-run movie house texting you a week before they get your new favorite Christopher Nolan movie. My point is that amazon trumps indie bookstores almost exclusively on convenience and selection, but the longest tail in the world doesn’t mean anything when OMG I WANT THAT RIGHT NOW. Brick and mortar stores still win on the grounds of being able to find what you want and take it home that day, but there are lessons they can learn from e-tailers that can help make their customers feel rewarded and not desperately targeted. Image via 2d-code.co.uk

Monetizing the brick and mortar store
or
How the Old Navy App should work.

So here’s the idea. You’re at Old Navy and you find a shirt you like, but OH NOES they’re out of your size. You know there’s like ten Old Navys within a reasonable bus ride, but it’s a $15 shirt at Old Navy … is it worth the trip to try and find out? Sometimes one of their helper robots will offer to call another store, but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Maybe it’s there, maybe they can find it, maybe it will still be there when you show up. More than likely, you sigh and put that medium back on the rack and go look at something else.

But this time, let’s imagine you do something different. You pull out your smartphone/cameraphone/whatever, and you fire up your gap.com app. You pay $20/year to subscribe to it, but you shop at gap/old navy/banana republic pretty much all the time, and you put it on your gap card anyway, so it’s not a big deal. You grab the tag, which has a QR code like the one above, maybe that says “OLD NAVY” in the middle. You snap a picture of it and the app pops up STUPID HIPSTER SHIRT WITH SNAPS IN HIDEOUS RED PLAID, SKINNY FIT, SIZE MEDIUM, $14.95. You click the button to edit details, grab the drop-down menu and change it to XL b/c you’ve been eating too much mall chinese food lately. Now you click the SEARCH button, and a list pops up showing all the stores in your area and how much stock they think they have (if you’ve been to IKEA or threadless.com you know what I’m talking about). You pick the store that’s on your way to work and you press the HOLD AT STORE button. The app hums for a minute, plays one of those stupid super-model-quins commercials, and you slip your phone back in your pocket and go get a jamba juice.

A little while later (maybe ten minutes, maybe half an hour, depends on a lot of factors we won’t get into today) you get a text message from OLD NAVY; “GOOD NEWS we found the item you wanted and it will be held at (the store you selected) for 72 hours; please present hold code 1z7wi4x at the customer service counter”. The next day you swing by on your lunch break and when you show up at your favorite dive bar that evening everyone compliments you on your awesome new western shirt, did you get it at Hollywood Vintage?

Now, replace OLD NAVY with APPLE STORE and replace XL WESTERN SHIRT with IPOD TOUCH 16BG 2ND GENERATION and perhaps you see the potential here. Or, since both of these companies have fairly robust online ordering systems and could easily tie that into the app, imagine scanning the QR code for your favorite salad at your local deli, that they only make about once a month, and getting a text message whenever a new batch is in the cold case. Or your local second-run movie house texting you a week before they get your new favorite Christopher Nolan movie.

My point is that amazon trumps indie bookstores almost exclusively on convenience and selection, but the longest tail in the world doesn’t mean anything when OMG I WANT THAT RIGHT NOW. Brick and mortar stores still win on the grounds of being able to find what you want and take it home that day, but there are lessons they can learn from e-tailers that can help make their customers feel rewarded and not desperately targeted.

Image via 2d-code.co.uk

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